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The Boy from Kyiv is the life story of Alexei Ratmansky, the most
celebrated ballet choreographer of our time. Alexei Ratmansky is
transforming ballet for the twenty-first century. An artist of
daring imagination, the choreographer has created breathtakingly
original works for the world's most revered companies. He has
fashioned a singular approach to balletic storytelling that bridges
the space between narrative and abstraction and heightens ambiguity
and surprise on the stage. He has boldly restored great
centuries-old ballets to their former glory, combining the use of
archival research with his own choreographic genius to retrieve
detail and color once lost to the ages. And above all, he is
renowned for fusing the Western and Eastern ballet traditions, and
for drawing on the visual arts, literature, music, film, and beyond
with inspired vim, to forge a style that is vibrant, eclectic, and
utterly new: one that promises to leave an indelible mark on this
venerable art form. But before Ratmansky was artistic director at
the Bolshoi Ballet, resident choreographer at American Ballet
Theatre, artist in residence at New York City Ballet, and
generally, as The New Yorker has it, "the most sought-after man in
ballet," he was just a boy from Kyiv, sneaking into the ballet at
night, concocting his own juvenile adaptations of novels and
stories, and dreaming up new possibilities of bodies in motion. In
The Boy from Kyiv, the first biography of this groundbreaking
artist, the celebrated dance writer Marina Harss takes us behind
the curtain to reveal Ratmansky's fascinating life, from his Soviet
boyhood through his globe-spanning career. Over a decade in the
making, this biography arrives at a pivotal moment in Ratmansky's
journey, one that has seen him painfully and publicly break ties
with Russia, the country in which he made his name, in solidarity
with his native Ukraine, and take on a new challenge at the storied
New York City Ballet. Told with the lyricism, drama, and verve that
befits its subject, The Boy from Kyiv is a riveting account of this
major artist's ascent to the peaks of his field, a mesmerizing
study of creativity in action, and a triumphant testament to
ballet's enduring vitality and power.
"To begin with I'd like to talk about my wife. To love means, in
addition to many other things, to delight in gazing upon and
observing the beloved."
--From Conjugal Love
When Silvio, a rich Italian dilettante, and his beautiful wife
agree to move to the country and forgo sex so that he will have the
energy to write a successful novel, something is bound to go wrong:
Silvio's literary ambitions are far too big for his second-rate
talent, and his wife Leda is a passionate woman. This dangerously
combustible situation is set off when Leda accuses Antonio, the
local barber who comes every morning to shave Silvio, of trying to
molest her. Silvio obstinately refuses to dismiss him, and the
quarrel and its shattering consequences put the couple's love to
the test.
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